According to our own tests and many reports on Twitter, Gmail and other Google services, such as Google Play, Google Drive, Google Calendar, and Chrome Sync, appear to be down for many users. While many people are experiencing the outage, it is not a total outage. The authentication system is probably to blame.

Some users report that their Chrome browsers are crashing when they load gmail.com. What started as a Gmail outage is more important than expected. Google Drive, Google Calendar and Google Play appear to be down for many users. There may be an authentication bug affecting Chrome Sync and Google’s authentication system. If you disable Chrome Sync and your browser stops crashing, it confirms that it comes from the authentication part.

When it comes to Gmail, mobile apps and IMAP through a regular mail client don’t work, either. For now, users can try alternative methods, such as the basic HTML version, the mobile version, etc. There is no guarantee of success.

Google hasn’t updated the status page yet. We’ve reached out to Google for a statement and will update as we learn more.

Update: Some users report that they can now load the Gmail web interface again.

Update 2: A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch:

We are currently experiencing an issue with some Google services. For everyone who is affected, we apologize for any inconvenience you may be experiencing. We will be posting updates to the Apps Status Dashboard.

Update 3: According to the apps dashboard, all services are now operational.